For a variety of reasons, but the short answer is that they had two superbly talented lead singers rather than just one, but much more importantly, both became extraordinarily talented songwriters. John Lennon and Paul McCartney may or may not have become successful on their own. But together they complimented one another’s songwriting talents perfectly, such that they became immeasurably better than they probably would have individually or under different circumstances.
Lennon was more lyrically adventurous, which inspired McCartney to try to match him. Likewise McCartney was more gifted musically, which inspired Lennon to up his game. So in the spirit of friendly competition, Lennon & McCartney spurred each other on and became the most successful songwriting duo in history (by records sold).
That creative fuel in turn inspired George Harrison to excel as a songwriter (who also occasionally sang lead). Harrison’s wonderful vocals also made for impeccable 3-part harmonies with Lennon & McCartney. And Ringo, who also sang lead on a few songs, was the solid backbone they needed to evolve as a cohesive unit. Together they expanded musical boundaries in revolutionary ways, and more quickly than any musical act before or since. They recorded their entire catalogue, including 20 #1 hits (US charts), in only 7 years. That’s a staggering thought when you consider that most modern acts release maybe 3 – 5 albums and perhaps 10 or so singles in that same time-frame. And their hits were just the tip of the iceberg, many people would agree that their albums and album tracks had an even greater impact and lasting influence on pop music.
Put it this way, from the time you first heard of Ed Sheeran (say, 2011) until now – the Beatles would have done what they did, changed the world, and broke up in 2018.
Also, unlike many other acts, the Beatles rarely repeated themselves, which is why listeners didn’t grow tired of them. Beginning roughly around 1965 almost every new release was a radical departure from the prior. They kept pushing boundaries, which is risky, but it paid off. The range of their stylistic diversity is arguably unparalleled for a major pop act.
Another, often overlooked, factor is that they were surrounded by the right people – especially their producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein. If they hadn’t captured the interest of Epstein (who had never managed a band before) they almost certainly wouldn’t have wound up in the position of being signed to Parlophone by George Martin – who decided to take a chance on them after they were rejected by other labels.
George Martin’s importance cannot be overstated. He was a classically trained musician, yet willing to experiment, so he helped guide the Beatles and turn their often radical ideas into reality. He was crucial to their ever-evolving sound.
Finally they arrived at the right time and place in history to touch a cultural nerve in a way that was virtually unprecedented. Some sociologists theorize that the JFK assassination, which occurred less than 6 months before Beatlemania, created a void or absence of joy (at least in the US) which needed to be filled. In addition to their exciting new sound, their natural charisma and irreverent humor was a refreshing delight to the press and the public. Regardless of the causes, they became a cultural phenomenon that remains unmatched to this day.
It’s not that John, Paul, George and Ringo were the most talented musicians on the planet – it’s the fact that they were in an environment that nurtured and inspired each of them to attain most of their full potential. Or to become self-actualized, to use a psychological term – as individuals, and as a unit.
Many, if not all, human beings have the latent potential to achieve great things, but very few wind up in environments which make that possible. The Beatles were four talented individuals who grew to become extraordinarily talented, and who emerged on the world stage at precisely the right moment. For the Beatles, all the stars happened to align perfectly, and the whole became far greater than the sum of its parts.
Its a common story. They started as a band of equals, with all of them being monsters at their instruments. Stewart Copeland was a fierce virtuoso on a drum kit, able to play complex and incredibly fast rhythms, Andy Summers was a virtuoso guitarist with a strong avant garde lean, and Sting was a superb bassist and singer with a distinctive voice, as well as being incredibly great looking.
I’ve heard several bootleg recordings from their early tours, and since they didn’t have a lot of songs, they would often play extended jams during the songs they had. During those jams, you can often hear grooves emerge that later became the riffs and foundations for new songs that would appear on later albums. It would be easy for a band member to assume that many of the songs were written by the entire band, at least in part. As time went on, Sting emerged as the primary songwriter, simply because his songs, and his lyrics were superior to the others.
This really bothered Copeland, who had developed an interesting new wave compositional style of his own. and he was frustrated that he couldn’t get his songs on the albums. Sting eventually allowed Copeland and Summers to have one one song each on the Synchronicity album. Copeland delivered the terrific song Miss Gradenko, while Summers decided to offend everybody with his punk anthem Mother, everybody’s least favorite song on the album (although I’ve always loved it). As interesting as both songs were, they sounded out of place on Sting’s carefully crafted masterpiece. Having to beg for space on the album, only to find that Sting was right anyway, had to have stung. Copeland started developing his own solo career under the name Klark Kent, where he could put out excellent new wave songs in his signature style without having to compete with, or get permission from, Sting.
Along the way, Sting’s ego had become huge, and there was talk of Copeland’s ego getting pretty big as well. To this day, Sting has a reputation of being extremely arrogant.
So they started off as a business arrangement, and as they got popular, their egos grew, clashed, and the band ended. Not the first story like that, nor the last.
For years, I neglected my CD collection. Most of the music I listened to was through streaming services like Spotify, and while I have a modest CD collection and a small record collection, I’ve been very digital-first, and not caring much about the quality of my music.
But lately, that’s been changing. Lots of people are returning to retro tech, and that made me think about my CDs, a beautiful format with fantastic audio quality, portability, and longevity. To hold a physical representation of my music in my hands, to display it, and to treasure it feels more meaningful than a Spotify subscription, so I’m happy to be revisiting my CDs again in 2024. Here are some of my main reasons for doing that…
The Session Man is a captivating music documentary that dives deep into the life and career of Nicky Hopkins, one of rock and roll’s most influential yet often overlooked pianists. Known for his exceptional work as a session musician, Hopkins contributed to some of the greatest hits of the 20th century, collaborating with iconic bands and artists. This film aims to shed light on his remarkable journey and lasting impact on the music industry.
The filmmakers have taken a balanced approach, blending technical analysis of Hopkins’ music with personal stories and historical context. This not only highlights his professional achievements but also provides insight into his personality and the challenges he faced. The narrative is driven by a combination of voice-over narration (courtesy of “Whispering Bob” Harris) and on-screen interviews, creating a dynamic and immersive experience for the viewer.
Professor Stephanie Burt shares what she learned about the singer’s stardom, relatability, and her own course at a college famous for being famous.
Last fall I told Harvard’s English Department that I planned to offer a class this spring on Taylor Swift. No one objected; Harvard professors like me get lots of latitude in confecting electives as long as we also offer the bread-and-butter material our majors need. (Most of my work is poetry-related; I also teach our regular undergrad course about literary form, from Beowulf on.) I’d call my new class Taylor Swift and Her World, as in: We’d read and listen to other artists and authors (part of her world). But also as in: It’s her world; we just live in it.
I’ve been living in it ever since. I thought I’d be teaching a quiet seminar: 20-odd Swifties around a big oak table, examining and appreciating her career, from her debut to Midnights, alongside her influences, from Carole King (see her Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech) to William Wordsworth (see “The Lakes” from Folklore). We would track her echoes and half rhymes, her arrangements and collaborations and allusions, her hooks and her choruses. We might sing along. We’d learn why “You Belong With Me” relies so much on its with (you don’t belong to me, nor I to you). We’d learn how the unease in “Tolerate It” speaks to its time signature (5/4). Maybe some English majors would get into songwriting. Maybe some Swifties would leave with old poems in their heads.
To be fair, almost all those things have now happened. We did sing along. Some undergrads learned to love the 18th-century poet and satirist Alexander Pope, or at least to pretend they did: Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” depicts his exasperation with superfans, false friends, and haters in ways rarely equaled until Reputation. We cracked open Easter eggs, and we studied her rhythms. But we couldn’t fit around a table. At one point 300 students signed up for the class; almost 200 ended up taking it. We met in a concert hall on campus, with a grand piano at center stage. I gave what I hope were engaging lectures, with pauses for questions, and stage props: a melodica, or a cuddly stuffed snake (for the snake motifs on Reputation). We had theater lights, and balcony seats, and the kind of big screen few humanities classrooms now need…
If you’re inclined to pine for days when music was purchased in the more tangible form of slabs of vinyl instead of the “invisible” format of encoded, downloaded “files”, I’ll remind you of one more thing to miss: The B-side.
The B-side or “flipside” had a significance to artist, fan and DJ alike. To a music consumer buying a “45” back in the day, the B-side was basically a freebie, a second helping from an artist, included for the price you paid for the hit song. For the artist, since songwriting royalties were paid equally for the A- and B-sides of a record, the B-side often represented the chance to cash in on the popularity of the hit, which they may not have written, by backing it with a composition of their own. And to a radio DJ worth his salt, the B-side was something else: an occasional opportunity to turn things upside-down.
Hence, the phenomenon of the Unintended B-side Hit.
Records were “flipped” by DJs for various reasons. Sometimes it was the lyric content of the A-side that made them look for another place to put the needle. The Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together” was deemed too suggestive by some, so in the U.S. the song never did crack the top 50, while its B-side, “Ruby Tuesday” went as high as number one. For similar reasons Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” was only released as a B-side–and in a live version at that–but it still didn’t stop the studio version from becoming an FM radio staple. (And now I’ve used “needle”, “crack”, “high”, and “cocaine” in a single paragraph that wasn’t about drugs. Thank you.)
The Doobie Brothers’ 1974 single “Another Park, Another Sunday” contained the lyric “…the radio just seems to bring me down…” which (go figure) wasn’t a favorite among radio programmers. The song was pulled from many stations’ playlists in favor of its flipside. But for this set of circumstances, Classic Rock canon would probably never today encompass something of such stylistic subversion as the bluegrass-flavored “Black Water”. By popular demand the song was re-released as an A-side and rose to number one, a peak never reached by “China Grove”, “Listen To The Music”, or any other of the Doobies’ pre-Michael McDonald hits. Talk about dumb luck.
Lyric content aside, Pop music history is full of the stories of the unintended hits, especially from the vinyl era, and usually occuring as the result of a DJ taking matters into his own hands and checking out the backside (so to speak).
Take a listen to Gary Glitter’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 1”
It was actually the A-side, the flip being eventual ubiquitous stadium anthem “Rock ‘n’ Roll Part 2”
Mostly-instrumental “Part 2” was an afterthought, never intended for regular airplay, much less Sports-Fans’-Call-To-Arms status. I don’t happen to know why DJs flipped the record in this instance, but I like to think it was just to hear less of Gary Glitter singing.
Speaking of sports anthems, not only was Steam’s 1969 hit “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)”intended as a B-side, but its writer tried to ensure DJs focused on its A-Side by giving “Na Na…” a final repeating chorus which extended the song to over four minutes–at the time an unpalatable length for airplay. Still, DJs managed to find the hidden gem (its A-side is long-forgotten) compelling the record label to release a slightly shorter version which listeners made a number one hit. And once the song caught on at sports stadiums (beginning with the Chicago White Sox adopting it as their theme song in 1976) “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” became an unlikely perennial.
Rod Stewart claimed that he’d “still be digging graves in the cemetery” if some DJ in Cleveland hadn’t flipped “Reason To Believe” over to play what became Rod’s breakout hit, “Maggie May” in 1971. (Seventeen volumes of The Great American Songbook later, there’d be sharp disagreement on whether Rod would have better served the world with the shovel or the mic. But there’s no doubt that DJ’s fateful flip helped, um, vault Rod to stardom.)
Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around The Clock” became, in 1955, Rock and Roll’s first certifiable anthem and number-one record. But its first release was as a flipside to a certifiable non-anthem called “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)” in 1954. One might wonder if Rock and Roll would have charted a different path had the movie Blackboard Jungle not featured “Rock Around The Clock” in its opening credits, giving the song a wider audience and a second chance. Interesting to ponder that Rock and Roll began not with a Big Bang but with a false start.
Van Morrison’s classic “Gloria”, recorded by his band Them, was a B-side (to “Baby Please Don’t Go”) as was The Champs’ “Tequila” (“Train To Nowhere”). Thank you, DJs.
In the Eighties the phenomenon continued with Madonna’s “Into The Groove” (originally the B-side of the 12″ mix of “Angel”) and Bruce Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” (the flipside of “Dancing In The Dark”). U2’s “The Sweetest Thing” was supposedly written by Bono as an apology to his wife for having to work on her birthday (sweet) then interred as the B-side of “Where The Streets Have No Name” (not so sweet).
Gloria Gaynor’s Disco anthem “I Will Survive” was originally released as a B-side. More oddly, perhaps, the A-side was a cover of a Righteous Brothers song.
Which brings us to “Unchained Melody”, perhaps King Of All Flipsides. This now-hallowed recording did not appear destined for iconic status when first released. If I may digress about the song’s history: it first appeared in the 1955 film Unchained, which explains why its title and lyrics really have nothing to do with one another (haven’t you always wondered?). The first “hit” version was an instrumental by Les Baxter that went to number one that same year. Al Hibbler took a vocal version to #3, also in ’55. By the time the Righteous Brothers recorded it, the song had already charted six times by as many artists including, incredibly, Vito & The Salutations
…whose version today sounds like a Doo-Wop novelty cover of the Righteous Brothers–but only to those of us not old enough to have heard each version upon its release. All this backstory to explain that Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield (or perhaps more accurately their record label) had no idea in 1965 they’d be releasing what would become the definitive version of a standard. From their perspective the song probably already seemed done to death. Still, it seems hard to believe they pegged it as a B-Side to the nice-but-forgettable “Hung On You” (See–you’ve forgotten it, haven’t you?). By now, “Unchained Melody” is said to have been recorded over 500 times in hundreds of languages. And while Baxter’s instrumental and Hibbler’s vocal version both actually charted higher, the Righteous Brothers’ treatment of “Unchained Melody” set the standard, going from B-side to All-Time Classic.
The vinyl “45” could be like your favorite shop having an unexpected buy-one-get-one sale. If you picked up the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women”, you now owned B-side “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. If you bought “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” you got “God Only Knows” in the bargain and if you dug “I Get Around” you’d flip when you heard “Don’t Worry Baby”. And if you bought a Beatles record? Sweet hook-ups abounded. I couldn’t resist citing a few of what were actually known as “Double A-sides”:
Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever
We Can Work It Out/Day Tripper
Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby
Hello Goodbye/I Am The Walrus
Hey Jude/Revolution
Come Together/Something
Elvis could pull that sort of thing off too, of course. How about “Don’t Be Cruel/Hound Dog”?
Try getting iTunes to do that for you.
Double A-sides aside, if the story of the Unintended B-side Hit has a salient point, it’s this: How many hit songs only became hit songs because we were buying them in twos, and not track by track as we do now? And also: the artist isn’t always the best judge of his work. Elton John notoriously had no intention of releasing “Bennie And The Jets” as a single until a Detroit DJ started playing it on an R&B station (yep, number one again). Record labels have uneven track records in terms of “hearing the hit”. Radio disc jockeys have seemed historically to be more, ahem, “in tune” to their listeners’ tastes.
But DJs have blind spots too, and I’m certain many records were flipped with no resulting hit song to tell the story of. Because ultimately flipside hits, like all hit songs, are a phenomenon of the People. Pop=Popular=Of the People. There are no stars without starmakers. Despite many factors which may have skewed music sales over the decades (payola, big label marketing, MTV…) it’s encouraging to know the ears of the DJ and most importantly the music fan have played their part in determining what are the “classics”, overriding at times even the judgment of the music’s creators. Pretty cool.
And this article recounts only a small number of Pop’s “unexpected hits”…there are many more be-sides!
Every Moment Has A Song 